


Spilt Milk

by bbeverly



Category: It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia
Genre: Alcohol Abuse/Alcoholism, Angst, Angst with a Happy Ending, Codependency, Dissociation, Hurt/Comfort, Implied/Referenced Sexual Assault, M/M, Mental Health Issues, Mutual Pining, North Dakota talk, Suicidal Ideation, eating disorder mention, from mrs klinsky to dennis, they kiss but it's like sad
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-11-09
Updated: 2019-11-09
Packaged: 2021-01-26 01:07:36
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,660
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21365647
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/bbeverly/pseuds/bbeverly
Summary: dennis spills a glass of milk on the floor of the kitchen, something cracks inside. mac just wants to superglue him back together, but dennis won't talk.
Relationships: Mac McDonald/Dennis Reynolds
Comments: 6
Kudos: 103





	Spilt Milk

**Author's Note:**

> read those tags for warnings WOO BOY okay uhm so yeah this is a fic that i worked disgustingly hard on so i hope,,, y'all like it
> 
> it's rated M bc of the themes yes okay
> 
> check my [tumblr](https://northdakotas.tumblr.com) if you want uhhh also here's a [spilt milk playlist](https://open.spotify.com/playlist/4ubpXW3Xx2oxwp2JmVPTnX) but it's just a macdennis playlist, this fic is based on the song [milk by samia](https://open.spotify.com/track/0jGuUT9A0uu3Cm58Wvmnbc) which is on there (^: sick okay enjoy

It was barely there, that hand on his sunken cheek. He couldn't say that is was  _ on _ , it was more or less  _ hovering  _ as if he were splintered porcelain about to shatter. That hand was unsure, nervous, testing the waters on what was acceptable. The hand attached to an arm shaking despite muscular bulk. A shoulder shuddering with uneven breaths. A tense neck, clenched jaw and the world's softest set of downturned eyes. All connected to one form. Those eyes were just looking at him, not through him, not over him... correction: not  _ at  _ him, either. Into him, it was into him that the eyes stared. Dennis was then brought to a sudden revelation.

It wasn't the phantom contact that scared him. Nor the thought about what would become of them afterwards.

What scared him was the knowledge that was in those eyes. The all-consuming concept of knowing someone to the depths of their person. "I know you," they said. "I've seen you at your worst and I've stayed. I've let you abandon me and I've stayed. I've allowed you to push and shove and scratch and bite and punch and I've stayed."

The hand ceased in its hovering, instead, it landed in slow-motion on cold terrain. The pressure caused a calming bloom of warmth to flood through his cheek. The bone tingled as the thumb swiped side to side taking moisture with it. When had he begun to cry? Best not to ask those kinds of questions, he supposes.

"Is this okay?" The question was soft, not so much spoken as it was a whisper. It had felt as though his head conjured it, feverish with some sort of crippling ailment-- but gods don't get sick. The question repeated, only this time it was attached to his name spoken like a prayer: "Dennis. Dennis, is this okay?"

He nodded, unsure if his voice would betray him in the same way his eyes had. He couldn't afford to show that much weakness, to expose the disconnect from himself. Why would he risk being found out? His soul floating ever-so-precariously three inches above and six to the left. Watching and understanding but not  _ being _ .

"Oh, Den," Mac says, those all-knowing eyes wavering as he glances between Dennis', "it's milk. It's just milk on the floor."

Dennis didn't like when Mac's voice got gentle like that. When he curled into himself so that he could be soothing, cautious, disciplined. Dennis removed himself from the stream of hatred when he noticed his sock growing lukewarm and damp. After all, it was just spilt milk on the linoleum. He choked on a laugh, biting his tongue as more tears sprang to his eyes. What kind of pussy cries over spilt milk? There was no sense of tact and Dennis Reynolds was nothing if not tactful. But the sock was steadily becoming more saturated and his toes were pruning. Why were they still standing in the fucking milk anyway and that is when Dennis looks down.

There's no milk surrounding his white sock, only a bloom of red on the cotton and the realization of pain. Glass shards scattered around him, shining in his sight. The milk to the left of his feet in a neat little pool where the linoleum tends to dip, and Mac's feet still in their shoes.

A silence looms between them, Dennis' brain taking a moment to catch up with his body. "We've talked about shoes in the fucking apartment, I know we have," Dennis finally says, leering. He's trying for anger so he can focus on something- anything -that isn't the sudden tightness in his chest. This wasn't his first time spiralling like this but this was home. This was Mac. It was Philly, it was shoddy exercise bikes, movie nights and monthly dinners. This wasn't North Dakota.

Fatigue creeps in and Dennis’ knees feel far too much like jello. Cherry, in plastic cups, with dull plastic spoons, eyes on him. Mac’s hand moves from his cheek to his waist, steadying. The other grips his shoulder in a feeble attempt to still comfort the man of pallor before him. Dennis holds his breath. Flashes of memory spark in his mind, his chest constricting. He feels his hands and feet go numb, Mac’s voice right beside his ear and yet it sounds as if he’s underwater. Drowning- no, that’s too out of control - _ floating  _ in the cataclysm of his own brain.

A jolt of cold shoots through his spine. Dennis realises he’s slipped through Mac’s hands (not for the first time) and landed on the floor (not for the last time). It goes in slow motion: Mac crashing to his knees and catching Dennis’ head before it can land on the linoleum. Mac cradling him against his chest. Mac fumbling for his phone.

Dennis’ body aches all over but the pain is centred, blooming from the ball of his foot and the tip of his tailbone. From the middle of his sternum and the crown of his head. It moves along capillary clusters, pulsing behind his eyelids. He shifts, closing his eyes against the twitch and gripping the front of Mac’s ratty old RIOT t-shirt.

He rolls the fabric between his fingers, the smell comforting in an alarming way. “I remember you fondly,” Dennis whispers. His voice catches and cracks, falling apart at every attempt he makes to speak.

He won’t give context, won’t explain what happened that brought him to this conclusion. It’s all very melodramatic, he thinks. Mac usually rolls his eyes at him when he’s this melodramatic, he knows from experience. Why isn’t Mac yelling, he wonders. His grip tightens, images flickering in his head again. Bright lights and worried faces with eyebrows furrowed. The hollow shake of medication- depressing little orange maracas topped with white.

Mac looks like those faces; worried, his eyebrows furrowed. A frown of concern that seemed permanent branded on his lips. Oh, Mac’s lips. Dennis hadn’t thought about them… not recently, at least. He thought about them more when they were younger, greasy and stoned in the McDonald’s basement. Bathing in the presence of one another while seated on the floor.

Mac’s voice shatters the nostalgia, his phone catching the light: “I’m calling 9-1-1.”

Dennis steels, eyes wide and crisp and cold. “No. No, Mac, you won’t. I’m not going back! Goddammit, I won’t go back!” It’s a rush of reality, like ice water when it's dumped on his head for a video challenge so he wouldn’t have to pay. “I’m fine,” he hissed, pushing himself from Mac’s grasp.

Everything still hurts, aches and burns with a blue flame. He’s still not all the way there, still not quite present within the moment but he can recognise the danger. The looming possibility of being strapped to a bed and not in a fun way. He won’t give away his half-thereness, won’t let people shine pen lights into his eyes. He can't sweat out the alcohol again or else he risks reliving the memories he’d shoved down with brown. Again.

He moves to push himself from Mac’s arms and, by extent, from the floor, but wheezes when the glass in his foot moves with him. With the most strength his voice can manage, the most him he can muster, he screams: “Fuck. FUCK!” Dennis slams his fist into the floor, fighting back more tears. Oh how worthless, how useless, pathetic,  _ incapable _ .

A librarian’s shrill echoes in his brain. “A dull boy needs someone to guide him, no fourteen-year-old should be so incapable in the ways of a woman. You have to  _ learn _ , Mr Reynolds, girls don’t like pathetic little boys.”

Dennis rubs at his eyes until his vision goes white, whipping his head to look at Mac and banish the memory. Mac’s still sat on the floor, downturned eyes wide and watering. His arms and legs still resting as if Dennis were in them. His phone is still glowing. Dennis glares, Mac winces and speaks: “We wanted to jump off the pier. Wondering if we’d- if we’d been there before ‘cause of that dream you told me you had.”

A pause. A breath. A heartbeat.

“What don’t you want to go back to, Den?” Mac shakes his head, voice betraying him and growing louder with each question. “What are you running from- no,  _ hiding  _ from? Why won’t you tell me? Why didn’t you tell me?”

WELCOME TO NORTH DAKOTA, the overhead speaker screams in Dennis’ memory. Yet Dennis knew the second “why”, the past tense looming “why”, wasn’t about his leaving- not directly, anyway. It was about that librarian. When Dennis was just lucky to be tired and not dead. All because two boys chickened out of leaping from the pier, hand-in-hand. He’d played it off as a conquest his entire life, thinking he could fool everyone.

Dennis looked to the pool of milk and the blood on his sock. Then, the complete and utter sense of anguish and loss and worry in Mac’s eyes. How could he fool Mac? He wanted to vomit; wanted to choke on it, seize up and foam at the mouth, to stop existing. Anything at all, any amount of vast and unending pain, would be better than being known. His ruse unfolded.

He’d never voice any of this out loud, though, for fear it may finally be the straw that breaks the camel’s back. The thing that sends Mac away, forces his hand in sending Dennis away. The spine finally snapping under the weight of it all, like Mandy. Oh god, Mandy.

“We need to clean this,” Dennis says instead. Ignoring all the phantom screaming ricocheting between his ears. He keeps his voice as level as possible in spite of the way it cracks, his throat torn and warm in a way that unsettled him.

Mac’s phone is still on, his contacts list almost blinding. Figures he’d have 911 saved as a contact, Dennis thinks. He squints in an attempt to see what category Mac’s thumb hovers over. D- Dental? Dennis? De-- “You’re sick, Dennis,” Mac says, his voice sounding like Mandy’s to a horrifying degree.

\- - -

_ “You need to take your medicine,” Mandy said, holding the pill bottle out. Her eyes were pleading, glistening with unshed tears. How dare she care? How dare she look genuinely affected by Dennis’ existence? _

_ He had looked passed her to the clock hanging above the fireplace ticking along. 10:30. Brian Jr. had been in bed for three hours now. Maybe that was the reason Mandy’s voice was so low. Why she was playing it safe with her choice of words. He returned his gaze to her when she shook the bottle, oh so very gentle. Her eyes were so much kinder than he deserved. _

_ After all, he was being a dull, pathetic little boy. _

_ “Please.” _

\- - -

Dennis shakes his head, running his fingers through his hair. He breathes, slow. It’s only him, not the librarian. It’s only Mac. No longer Mandy. This is different because this is home and nothing bad can happen at home. Never. Mac wouldn’t let something happen to Dennis, right? And would they ever be in a position in which it came down to that: Mac allowing something awful to happen to Dennis?

“Please.” Mac’s standing now, phone against his ear.

Dennis feels like a child, seated on the floor, wounded and about to be scolded. He knows he’s not a child, though, he knows it and he’ll prove it. He grabs the handle of the drawer above him, staring Mac down as he forces himself up. The pain in his foot has numbed itself now, his chest tight and his lungs heaving but what did he care? Maybe he couldn’t fool Mac, but he could fool whoever it was on the phone. He could act. He got all the acting genes Dee wishes she could get her clumsy hands on.

“Fine, FINE, if you won’t clean up this god damn mess I’ll do it,” he spits. Walking on the heel of his wounded right foot and resting most of his weight (or lack thereof) on the left. He grabs a roll of paper towels, then the rag usually reserved for dishes and dampens it. Dennis turns, slowly, aware of nausea rolling through his abdomen. Whether it was from blood loss (or an accumulation of pain or a lack of alcohol or a punishment for his constant pretending) was up for debate.

He dropped to his knees in front of the spill, careful to avoid the large chunks of glass. He was aware the little ones couldn’t cut through the denim of his jeans unless he really wants them to. Was it wrong to say he did, somewhere deep down, want that? He began placing paper towels on the puddle. He watched as they absorbed the liquid, growing heavy in the centre and then sinking. Dennis stared, longing.

He wanted to drown as he did in North Dakota.

He can't help but be addicted to the dramatics.

He wants someone to care for him.

Mac stays silent, out of character for him, only vanishing once to get the broom from Dennis’ bathroom. He drags the trashcan over to where Dennis is knelt and kneels beside him. His balance aided by the broom whose bristles are being flattened against the floor. Dennis couldn’t find it in himself to complain.

They cleaned in tense silence. Soaked paper towels are thrown away and milk residue is wiped by the washcloth that picks up small glass pieces along the way. The bigger shards are tossed into the bin with shaking hands belonging to both men. Mac helps Dennis into one of the dining table’s chairs, sweeping everything that had survived through the first round of cleaning.

They had done the process a little backwards, but neither commented. The vague sense of control seemed to help them both, though it came from two different places.

“I like doing things for you, Den,” Mac says, finally, not quite looking at Dennis. “I like taking care of you.”

A sick part of him wants to claw Mac’s cheek for not making eye contact. Another is thankful because it means that Mac can’t see the faintest trace of  _ please _ that passes along Dennis’ face. Please: care for me, hold me, take me home, keep me safe, protect me always. As if they haven’t been caring for one another the entire time. As if  _ care _ wasn’t their love.

\- - -

_ “‘I like taking care of you,’ the prince said, kissing the princess’ hand. _

_ The princess blushed, smiling, ‘Thank you, my prince, I know not what I would do without you!’” _

_ Dennis heard Mandy’s voice read as he stood outside Brain Jr’s room, leaning against the doorframe. His chest churned with something unfamiliar. Beer in hand, he had chalked it up to tipsiness despite knowing exactly what that felt like. Not willing to dissect it any further, he knocked on the door with little commitment. _

_ Mandy looked up from the book and smiled. It’s a sad smile but neither of them would bring it up. _

_ “Wanted to say g’night to my namesake,” Dennis said. His lungs not his own but those of someone else, the father of Brian Jr., the baby daddy to Mandy. Alien lungs. “So, g’night.” _

_ He turned, walking down the hall and downing the rest of the beer. _

_ Breathe. _

\- - -

“Who’d you call?” Dennis asks, electing to ignore Mac’s comment entirely. Not ready to open that pandora’s box, not willing to dissect it any further. A knock at the door.

Mac rests the broom in the corner of the kitchen, dragging the trashcan back into place. Then heads toward the front door of the apartment. “Dee,” he says, noncommittal, opening the dark wood to reveal Dennis’ extremely sweaty twin.

“My car took an absolute shit so I fuckin’ booked it.” Dee leans against the doorframe to catch her breath. She pinches the bridge of her nose before blinking her eyes open. They immediately lock with Dennis’ and seem to relax, crinkling at the edges when she half-smiles. “Well look, he’s fine. Don’t know what you called me for, Mac.”

As often as Dennis mocked his sister’s intelligence he knew that she was aware of why Mac called. He knew that she saw how completely dishevelled he was. The tear tracks still crusted on his cheeks, redness below his nose, chapped lips parted as if he were about to speak (she knew he wouldn’t). He owed her one, really, for seeing him like this and immediately playing dumb. After all, how many times had she been the one helping him through these moments of breaking down?

Dee knew that Dennis would talk about it when he felt good and ready. She remembered crying to him when her spine was like a cedar tree bent forty-five degrees. The way when nobody was around, he’d comfort her. He always knew what she needed and she was no different. Dee understood deep at her core that Dennis didn’t want to talk about what was making him like this. It wasn’t as if she hadn’t noticed, only chosen to ignore it. Leave him to wade through the water on his own.

She shifts her weight from the balls of her feet to the heels as Mac scrutinises her. Finally, she turns her gaze to him instead of her dilapidated brother. “I legit dunno why you called me, he’s just sitting there. You made it sound like he needed to be locked up or something, that he was going absolutely batshit.”

Dennis cringes back a moment, he knew she was right though. Who in their right mind could look at his actions and not think he was completely losing it. He was a ship out at sea, unable to perceive the beam of the lighthouse that would guide him home. Trapped in a prison of his own creation. He had chosen to board the boat and sail out under the assumption he’d be able to return to land. He hadn’t anticipated the storm that would rage for years on end. The obscuring of his vision, making it seem as if the lighthouse had forgotten all about him.

“Dee, I know we talk a lot of shit but there is no way you are this much of a dumb bitch,” Mac snaps, throwing his hands up in the air. “Look at him. LOOK AT HIM! Look at Dennis and tell me that he is okay, that nothing is wrong. That he is the picture of wellbeing. That something didn’t fucking happen in high school and something didn’t fuck him up all over again in North  _ fucking  _ Dakota! I wasn’t making shit up when I called you!”

She froze, rearing back as Mac got into her space then battened down, rolling her shoulders. Dennis watched as she turned into their mother, the way she looked before yelling at Dee for something inconsequential. It made him shudder. “We all know what happened in high school. Put two-and-two to-fucking-gether, Mac,” comes her reply. She doesn’t sound like their mother, no malice behind it. More like begging.

_ Let it go _ , her tone says,  _ leave him be _ .  _ We can’t risk breaking him more _ . “As for ‘North fucking Dakota’? If he doesn’t want to talk about it you can’t force him to talk about it! It’s that--” Dee shakes her head. “It’s that simple, okay dude?”

“Well if he doesn’t talk about it, he's going to keep  _ hurting himself _ ! Gonna keep-- keep fucking,  _ shit _ , keep having mental breakdowns over glasses of milk. Pretending everything is fine when it’s not!” Mac shouts, gesturing wildly. “Did you know he doesn’t eat? He drinks and smokes when he thinks I’m not paying attention. Frankly, Dee, I wouldn’t be surprised if he spent the time he’s not here at your place smoking God Damn  _ crack.  _ Trying to escape whatever is going on in his head!”

They all fall silent- not that Dennis wasn’t silent, to begin with. He’s still floating. The shouting almost lulling him into invisibility until he catches Mac’s gaze. His eyes are full of tears. Pleading as they glance between the two Reynolds twins begging for someone to talk to him. To explain to him or make sense of everything going on.

Mac’s voice is lower now, scratching, painful to hear. “Tell me why he shouldn’t talk about it,” he says.

Dennis watches Dee’s hands ball into fists, then loosen. She still puts on a face stronger than she is but her form shrinks back down to Dee, no longer their mother. An odd sense of relief floods over him. She was only trying to scare Mac out of asking questions. He’d thank her if it worked, but Mac had a weird, stubborn edge since Dennis’ return. A protective streak.

Dee is no one to Mac; not a friend, not an enemy… nothing. She’s not helping him and so she is nothing.

Every so often- and mostly when Dennis is sure he’s dying or being abandoned -Dennis tells her he loves her. Acknowledges that she is something, someone. She mocks him for it, of course, but he knows that’s how they volley.

“Dee,” Dennis says, standing slow and settling a mask on his face.  _ You are too grand _ he is shouting at No One and she nods, stepping around Mac and walking towards him. “Go home before he calls the police or something stupid.”

She stands with her back to Mac, eyes to Dennis, resting a hand on his shoulder. She squeezes once, twice,  _ but sweet tender baby _ , “the damage is done.”

She spares a glance down at his sock, grimacing. Dee removes her hand, flicking her hair behind her shoulder. Then she is turning to head out the door, her own chest tight and- unaware to her -mimicking her brother’s. Funny how it seems to still work like that, her foot hurting in a strange way she didn’t know it could from running.

As she passes Mac he lets out a huff of air, then deflates. The air of the room palpable as Dee leaves, leaving only a few words in her wake: “Get the glass out of my dick brother’s foot.”

The door closing reverberates in the space between Mac and Dennis. A space that seems far too big for two people so fragile. They are glass Christmas ornaments with no bubble wrap. Destined to crash into one another and break, cutting up the fingers of the people who find them.

“That was some stunt you pulled,” Dennis says, going for strength and missing by a longshot.

Mac looks at him, defeated. His anger drained out of him only leaving behind a shell, an empty thing. Pitiful. Lonely. “Why won’t you talk to me? Did I do something or-- no, if I did anything you’d’ve nailed me to the wall by now.” He laughs, but there’s no humour in it. “Dennis, I’m so tired. Tired of trying to help and you doing everything in your power to stop me. It’s like… like you  _ want _ to be sick.”

WELCOME TO PHILADELPHIA, nobody’s been killed. So why does Dennis still feels as though a bullet has ripped through his chest?  _ Want to be sick _ ?  _ Want _ to be  _ sick _ ? He feels the disgust settle onto his face, contorting it in such a way he looks as vile as he feels. The world around him twists, arching into some sense of unreality before his soul comes crashing back into him. It knocks him down to his knees, his coughing harsh, sudden as everything comes into intense focus.

Nausea gets the best of him, making him gag despite nothing coming up. His arms shake. Dennis waits for Mac to move, but he doesn’t. There’s no sound of creaking apartment floors, only Dennis’ own ragged breathing. Then, a sniffle, but not from him.

He looks up at Mac. Beautiful Mac. He looks like the statues of Mary in which she’s weeping, the tears on his cheeks not falling but cascading. His lip trembled and his hands are vaguely clasped under his chin as if he were about to pray. Pray for his own salvation or Dennis’ the latter doesn’t know.

The irony doesn’t get passed him, though. The way he is kneeling, almost reverent as Mac stands a few feet in front of him looking like a God-forsaken saint. They stay like this for a while. Dennis, rearing back his nausea. Mac, looking down at him like he hung the moon and all the stars. Only to tear them down when he thinks people like the creation more than Dennis himself. How close it is to the truth is sickening.

“I shouldn’t have said that,” Mac says, moving to sit in front of Dennis. He does so with an air of caution like if he moves too quickly he’ll spook Dennis into a corner. “I just spilt, like, all my guts, I’m sorry.”

Dennis is used to this Mac, the eggshell Mac. The I-Don’t-Want-To-Disappoint and so I’ll-Let-You-Control-My-Life Mac. He resents it. Yet, the familiarity soothes something wild inside, something beastly and inhuman. The thing that killed the crows. Bile almost comes up, instead, Dennis lifts his gaze. He looks at Mac, takes him in. His eyes still letting holy water drip.

It has to be holy water. Nothing less for tears that fall for the Golden God. Though Dennis doesn’t feel like a God, he doesn’t think he ever did. It was easier than acknowledging how human he was. Beat up on the inside and out. Traumatised to his core by outside forces and then re-traumatised by his own actions. How does Mac stay so human? Stay so much like home?

With knees shouting in protest Dennis crawls over to sit next to Mac. Once adjusted he turns to face the only Catholic he trusts. He places his own hand on Mac’s cheek. There’s no manipulation behind it, they aren’t pretending to be Vic Vinegar and Hugh Honey. Dennis allows himself to feel, mimics Mac’s earlier movements in the way his thumb picks up tears.

He sighed, feeling Mac lean into the affection. How has he gone so long denying himself this? How has he built it all up and watched it all come down because of one glass of milk? How could he have left for an entire year knowing security was waiting for him? The panicked feeling in his chest is still there, but Dennis is a man of spite. “Don’t cry, my dear,” Dennis lets the term of endearment rest between them. “Not over something you spilt. It’s just me, it’s not you anymore. I’m taking… I’m taking fault.”

Mac’s eyes widen, soften, shed more tears. He shakes his head, Dennis’ hand retracting slow and steady despite the shaking. “Don’t say things like that, Den. Not to me. Y’know how I feel and, like, you won’t tell me what’s going on so I can’t even- I don’t understand your motives,” Mac says. “Let’s just… get the glass out of your foot so Dee doesn’t cut my head off even though I could totally take her because I’m totally buff.”

There’s a smile on his face, not a big one, not a happy one, but a smile nonetheless. An attempt to clear the air thick with words unsaid. A dam inside Dennis breaks again and Mandy’s voice is in his head.  _ TELL HIM _ , it screams,  _ TELL HIM! TELL HIM! TELL HIM! HOME WILL NEVER ABANDON YOU! _ Before Dennis can open his mouth there are arms wrapping around him.

He’s hauled into the air by Mac whose grip is solid, unwavering. Warm. Safe. Dennis wraps his arms around Mac’s neck, hiding his face in the crook of it. He inhales. Mac’s smell, safe. Mac’s arms, secure. Not an orderly who has to carry Dennis because he isn’t eating and is too weak to stand. Not Mandy who's holding him because he’s drunk and lonely and hasn’t told her to fuck off yet. It’s Mac.

Mac carrying him to the bathroom and setting him down on the toilet lid. Mac rifling through the cabinet for the first aid kit. Mac swearing when he slams his finger in the medicine cabinet while grabbing the bottle of ibuprofen. Dennis’ senses flooded by it. By him.

He watches as Mac peels off his sock, looking up as if waiting to be yelled at for the stinging sensation that travels up Dennis’ leg. Dennis says nothing, only clenching his teeth and nodding. Mac continues, wetting some toilet paper and cleaning off dried blood, as much as he can given the circumstances. Then he pulls out his phone, turning the flashlight on and fumbling for tweezers. He grabs Dennis’ eyebrow tweezers instead of the ones in the kit but Dennis doesn’t say anything.

Until he feels a piece of glass sliding out from his skin.

“Oh, fucking-- GOD  _ DAMMIT _ ! Goddammit all straight to hell, Mac what the fuck? What the  _ fuck _ !” Dennis screams, kicking his foot out and barely missing Mac’s face.

To his chagrin the bastard is grinning, a piece of glass clutched between the tips of the tweezers. And Dennis laughs. He laughs because he’s in pain. He laughs because for once in his life the outside pain matches the inside pain. He laughs because the feeling of Mac’s hand pulling at his foot while looking for glass pieces is tickling him. He laughs until he cries again.

“Den?” Mac asks. He makes no move to touch Dennis who is now hunched over, elbows on his knees while he sobs. If Dennis doesn’t see him coming he finds it best not to reach out. Reaching leaves him at risk of being verbally assaulted.

But it’s Dennis who reaches. Hand clasping around Mac’s wrist. His eyes are rimmed red and Dennis is an ugly crier but who is Mac to judge because Dennis is  _ talking about it _ .

“She looked like Klinsky,” Dennis says. His face contorts as he says the name as if it burned him. “It was Halloween. Mandy said she was gonna dress like a librarian because Brian was being some shitty book character or something. And I-- Mac, when I saw her she just-”

Mac nods, letting Dennis’ ankle go and placing his free hand on Dennis’ hip. Boney. Uncomfortable. A conversation for another time. Instead, he coaxes Dennis down into his lap. He holds him tight, feeling hands rest on his chest. The neckline of the shirt being pulled and rubbed between cold fingers. “Go on.”

Dennis breathes deep. Now or never. “She looked just like that fucking librarian and, God, Mac,” he says the two as though they’re interchangeable, “it broke something. I snapped. It was like flipping a lightswitch- I scared the shit out of them.”

“What did you do, Den?” Mac’s not sure if he wants the answer judging by the way Dennis tries to shrink into himself.

“I took the rest of my ‘script ‘n’ then I sat in the bathtub… ‘n’ I drank- God, I drank -so much. So fucking much. I didn’t want to- I couldn’t- Mac it wasn’t a  _ conquest _ ! She fucked me on the floor of her office and told me I needed to learn otherwise nobody- nobody,” he wheezes.

Mac’s hand rubs up and down on his back. Whispering, “it’s okay.” They both knew it was a lie. There was nothing okay about any of this, nothing they could ever come back from.

“Nobody would love me,” Dennis whispers. He feels far too exposed. The Golden God-image is more shattered than it was previously, its origins excavated and shown off. A God receives unconditional love, after all. And at fourteen Dennis Reynolds had exchanged his feelings for love- or a warped version of it. “Seeing Mandy look like that- I don’t even know. I woke up in the hospital, suicide watch or some shit. All I wanted was to come home. I kept having this dream. Klinsky was dead, I would watch ‘em pull the plug and I’d-- I’d, like, see her spirit ascend. And she’d  _ sing  _ from this pedestal, well, not quite sing but… whatever you get the picture.”

Dennis sniffled, wiping his nose on his hand and his hand on his jeans. He’d worry about it later. Mac didn’t mention it, sitting in silence while Dennis spoke. His hand moving mindlessly along a protruding spine, eventually reaching into the curled ends of hair.

“‘Nd I’d wake up, run to the bathroom and… retch. Even in my head she’d taunt me, tell me I’m unlovable. Mandy didn’t love me because she’d sent me away. The gang didn’t love me because nobody tried to stop me from leaving. Hell, you blew up my fucking car,” Dennis forced a laugh. “I’d sit there, trying to see how far my two fingers could fit around my thigh. Figured if I was at least pretty someone’d love me.”

“Dennis, I--”

“I know.”

It wasn’t all the details, Dennis knew Mac could figure that out, but it was a start. They had a lot to work through like Dennis’ mental health, the years of repression and the downright crippling codependency. All that mattered to Mac now, though, was that Dennis told him.

Dennis tilts his head upward, looking at Mac. Not through him, not over him… correction: not at him, either. Into him. Dennis looked into Mac and found Mac looking back. The hand in his hair stilled, pulling forward to cup the side of Dennis’ face. Mac’s arms shook and Dennis’ shoulder shuddered with uneven breaths. Breaths they shared as the distance between them closed.

It was disgusting. The kiss tasted like snot and tears. Dennis’ foot dripped blood onto the linoleum and Mac was far more emotionally present. Yet it felt like coming home. For a moment, Dennis Reynolds didn’t mind being known and Mac McDonald had no qualms committing blasphemy. It was just milk on the floor.


End file.
